"Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." — Helen Keller The Open Door
"Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity." — Unknown
"It all boils down to fear. Fear is such a powerful emotion. Sometimes it keeps us safe, but more often, it keeps us from taking the risks that propel us forward. On the flip side, it can be a fantastic motivator." — Julie Hotz She Explores, Episode 2, "On Fear: Human Powered Travel"
"It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case, you fail by default." — JK Rowling Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
"It’s a good thing to have all the props pulled out from under us occasionally. It gives us some sense of what is rock under our feet and what is sand." — Madeleine L'Engle The Summer of the Great-Grandmother
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day." — Bill Watterson Calvin and Hobbs
"The creature at your feet dismissed as a bug or a weed is a creation in and of itself. It has a name, a million-year history, and a place in the world. Its genome adapts it to a special niche in an ecosystem. The ethical value substantiated by close examination of its biology is that the life forms around us are too old, too complex, and potentially too useful to be carelessly discarded." — Edward Wilson The Future of Life
"Public lands instruct in the value of respecting differences. We may all be endowed with a love of nature, but that passion takes many forms. Public lands must accommodate multiple uses because there are multiple publics whose wishes point in all directions. … Such differences don’t have to fester into divisions. The duck hunter and the birdwatcher may have their own ideas about the highest value of a wetland. Yet both know that without public protection, there might not be a wetland at all…. America’s public lands teach the etiquette of sharing. They instruct is in the manners of coexistence, cooperation, and consideration toward each other. … Such humility can remind us that even though we may find the culture and politics of others to be incomprehensible, their desire to find happiness in the natural world is much the same as our own." — Jason Mark Sierra Magazine, July/August 2020 Issue, "In Public Lands is the Preservation of the Republic"
"It’s more interesting and fun to honor the reality that no two redwoods are the same, and that if you’ve seen one redwood … you’ve seen one redwood. We are sustained by each redwood truly seen, and we evolve by understanding and being inspired by the differences between each tree, person, culture, mountain range, and creature of the earth. The Funhogs of 1968 were on the road of realizing in each present moment the truism of the iconic John Muir’s observation: “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” If you’ve seen one redwood, you’re connected to them all." — Dick Dorworth Climbing Fitz Roy, 1968, "Viva los Funhogs"
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." — John Muir My First Summer in the Sierra
"I’m increasingly interested in making myself a sheet of paper, in forfeiting my privileged status as author and allowing stacked stones, mud mortar, surrounding geology, encompassing weather...to do the writing." — Leath Tonino Adventure Journal, "The Wild and the Old Places Do Not Need You"
"We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them." — Albert Einstein
"To the brain, the future is as real as the past. The difficulty begins when reality doesn’t match the plan. In nature, adaptation is important; the plan is not. It’s a Zen thing. We must plan. But we must be able to let go of the plan, too. Under the influence of a plan, it’s easy to see what we want to see." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Fear puts me in my place. It gives me the humility to see things as they are." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"In a true survival situation, you are by definition looking death in the face, and if you can’t find something droll and even something wondrous and inspiring in it, you are already in a world of hurt." — Laurence Gonzales Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why
"Our brain loves to not decide things. We love to default, or revert to the mean, or do what we know." — Sara Boilen Powder Magazine, "Your Heart and Brain Are Working Against You in Avalanche Terrain"
"When we admit that we don’t know, we give ourselves permission to be vulnerable. More importantly, we recognize a starting point from which to gather information." — Dave Richards Backcountry Magazine, "A Certain Uncertainty"
"When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other." — Eric Hoffer
"We construct an expected world because we can’t handle the complexity of the present one, and then process the information that fits the expected world, and find reasons to exclude the information that might contradict it." — Charles Perrow Normal Accidents
